Mahailya Pryer, convicted of entering the U.S. Capitol during the riots on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to more time in prison after violating her probation. (photos from court documents)
A federal judge this week ordered a Jan. 6 rioter from Missouri to spend 30 more days in prison for frequently violating her probation, including using drugs and admitting to felonies of leaving the scene of an accident and endangering the welfare of a child involving drugs.
Mahailya Pryer was ordered into the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons for 156 days, with credit for 81 days already served and 45 days that reflect the 14 months she spent on probation after admitting to a misdemeanor count of trespassing into the Capitol building during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth also denied Pryer’s motion to be released pending an appeal.
Pryer had been fighting to terminate her probation, arguing that her sentence was now illegal after a federal appeals court ruling last year involving another Capitol riot case, United States v. Little, which determined a court sentencing a defendant for a single petty offense may impose imprisonment or probation, but not both.
Pryer was identified as a participant in former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that day through social media, authorities said. Wearing red, white, and blue stocking hats emblazoned with the number “45,” she entered the Capitol at 2:43 and exited at 2:51 p.m.
Pryer pleaded guilty in May 2022 to parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. She was initially sentenced to 45 days in prison, followed by 36 months of probation.
She did her time and can’t twice be punished for the same offense, her public defenders argued.
“This Court was without the authority to impose both imprisonment and probation, but Ms. Pryer received both,” the lawyers wrote. “She has fully served the imprisonment portion of her sentence, and therefore her probation must be terminated because she cannot twice be punished for the same offense.”
In April 2023, the probation office alerted the court that Pryer had violated eight conditions of her probation. At least four times, she drove a vehicle without a valid driver’s license or insurance and was accused of possessing or using methamphetamine.
She was arrested on May 1, 2023. On May 24, a judge ordered her released to home incarceration at an inpatient facility, pending her final hearing on revocation. She was not released until June 5 because of limited bed space at the inpatient facility and spent 36 days in custody.
On July 5, after she had spent 30 days at the inpatient facility, a Magistrate Judge, Zia M. Faruqui, modified her conditions of release from home incarceration to home detention. She was permitted to leave her home so she could get treatment for addiction and mental health and seek employment.
But by Aug. 15, the probation office filed a supplement report alleging further violations, including using and possessing methamphetamine and fentanyl. The following month, Pryer’s conditions of release were modified to remove location monitoring.
In November, Pryer moved for early termination of her probation, a month before the probation office filed another petition alleging additional violations. In response, the government moved to have Pryer resentenced.
Meanwhile, Pryer had allegedly failed to notify her probation officer of a change of residence and went missing. Her whereabouts were reported as “unknown.”
In January 2024, Faruqui concluded that because Pryer had completed her term of imprisonment, double jeopardy would apply and she recommended that the Court “void Ms. Pryer’s sentence of probation, deny the government’s motion for resentencing, dismiss Ms. Pryer’s motion for early termination as moot, and close the case.”
On Feb. 2, the Court issued an opinion denying the government’s motion for resentencing and declining to adopt the recommendation that the Court “void” Pryer’s sentence because “[t]he Court can only act within the bounds of its authority set by Congress, and no statute or rule gives the Court authority, under these facts and on this procedural posture, to revisit Pryer’s sentence at this time.”
That left Lamberth to address Pryer’s motion for early termination and the sentence on the probation violations.
Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said Pryer’s conduct did not warrant early termination and was taken aback by the amount of alleged probation violations documented.
“Ms. Pryer has not established that her conduct warrants early termination because she has not shown changed circumstances or exceptionally good behavior,” Lamberth said in his opinion. “Instead, she concedes that she has violated her conditions.”
“Ms. Pryer’s conduct also reflects such a deep disrespect for the law and public safety that early termination would fail ‘to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant,”” he continued.
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